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Hydrant Rains Damage on Apartments

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ten North Hollywood families were temporarily homeless Monday after a car sheared off a fire hydrant and sent a jet of water arcing onto their apartment building, authorities said.

Half of the apartments in the 24-unit building in the 11700 block of Vanowen Street were damaged when a 60-foot-high arc of water shot onto the roof and into the courtyard of the two-story building after the Sunday afternoon accident. No one was injured.

“It was like a hurricane,” said Wanda Sanchez, manager of the complex. “There was a waterfall coming down off the roof.”

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Los Angeles Police Sgt. Al Zardeneta said Juan Lopez, 33, was driving west on Vanowen when he lost control of his car and struck the fire hydrant in front of the apartment building. Los Angeles firefighters shut off the hydrant line in about 15 minutes, but the water had already leaked through the roof and down through walls and ceilings of several apartments. Water, gas and electricity were turned off in 12 units. Residents were evacuated to an American Red Cross shelter at nearby James Madison Junior High School.

On Monday, Red Cross workers surveyed the apartments. Sanchez said eight apartments were badly damaged and four others were slightly damaged. In many of the apartments, ceilings were crumbling, and water pooled on the floors. The manager said electricity would probably remain off until the apartments dry out.

Sanchez said she did not know when tenants would be able to return to the badly damaged units. Nancy Albrecht, a disaster volunteer, said the Red Cross would continue to provide shelter at the school or in motels for the 36 tenants, many of them children.

Guadalupe Flores, whose first-floor apartment of 12 years appeared to be the most severely damaged, returned home Monday morning to find drenched carpets and portions of the ceiling stained and falling.

Although firefighters had covered her furniture with plastic sheets, most of her belongings--clothes, beds, appliances--were soaked. With the utilities cut off and no insurance to pay for the damages, she said she did not know what she would do.

“I have to go to work, and my daughter has to go to school,” she said. “I don’t know where I will stay or what I can do.”

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A woman whose apartment was only slightly damaged but also had no utilities Monday, said she preferred to live in her home than to stay another night in a shelter. “I want to start cleaning up and to stay with my things,” the woman said.

Ed Freudenburg, a spokesman for the Department of Water and Power, said a broken fire hydrant can release up to 5,000 gallons of water per minute. He said it was unusual for a hydrant break to result in water shooting into a nearby property. The hydrants are designed to break off completely so the water shoots straight up and then falls down on the curb area, he said.

About 1,300 of the 55,000 fire hydrants in Los Angeles are broken in accidents each year, Freudenburg said.

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